Abortion and godlings

The desire to favour ideology over compassion for women has surfaced in Ireland in very distressing way. A pregnant woman (Savita Halappanavar) was admitted to University Hospital Galway (UHG), where she was found to be miscarrying and soon was in severe pain. Savita died of septicaemia a week later. Why did Savita die? According to an article in The Irish Times a request for a medical termination was refused because the foetal heartbeat was still present, and “this is a Catholic country”. Perhaps the doctors (godlings?) would also claim that even after rape any pregnancy is “something that God intended to happen” (believed by some in the USA)?

A necessary medical treatment to save the life of the mother because of foetal termination. We have a case where the perceived “rights” of a foetus (who had not been born) superseded the rights of a woman (who had been born) – this unfortunate position appears throughout many conservative political ideologies. Often “abortion” is a political issue dressed in religious clothes.

One ploy used by extreme advocates on many sides of of many issues is redefinition of terms. In the USA, for example, there are those emphasize forcible rape (as compared to unforced rape?). This variant of rape is called “forcible” because some outsider thinks it is a legitimate accusation – there are still men who think that a woman saying “No” really means “Yes”. Forcible rape has also been called “legitimate” rape, and the woman’s body is supposed to know instinctively the difference between legitimate rape and other forms of rape.
Take the notion of forcible rape a bit further, and add a woman’s health:

Abortion, the taking of life, is one of the most grievous of sins. We have repeatedly affirmed the position of the Church in unalterably opposing all abortions, except in two rare instances: When conception is the result of forcible rape and when competent medical counsel indicates that a mother’s health would otherwise be seriously jeopardized.
— Spencer W Kimball (President of the Church), “A Report and a Challenge”, October 1976 General Conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Kimball was an LDS leader, and the “forcible” language continues in Mormon circles. According to the LDS Handbook 2: Administering the Church [retrieved 2012-11-17] members should not enable elective abortions except when “Pregnancy resulted from forcible rape or incest”, or the woman’s health is in danger, or the foetus would not survive beyond birth. This Mormon position is a fairly liberal position for anti-abortion supporters, especially compared to Catholic dogmatists such as the godlings at UHG.
It might be reassuring to believe that this hospital is an outlier even in Ireland, but it is a substantial outlier – UHG is part of a hospital system whose catchment area has “in the region of one million people from Donegal to Tipperary North”. When talking about ideologies of compassion and care in UHG, it is relevant that a retired professor of gynaecology from Galway (Eamon O’Dwyer) is an avid anti-abortion campaigner whose influence might still be felt in its gynaecological beds. O’Dwyer’s pronouncements are very popular in conservative Irish and US Catholic circles, and such views have an international appeal:

As experienced practitioners and researchers in obstetrics and gynecology, we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman. | We uphold that there is a fundamental difference between abortion, and necessary medical treatments that are carried out to save the life of the mother, even if such treatment results in the loss of life of her unborn child. | We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women.
— ZENIT.org News Agency, “Medical Symposium: Abortion Is Never Medically Necessary”, EWTN, 14 September 2012 [my emphasis, see above – the EWTN Global Catholic Network is based in Alabama, USA, thus the US spelling of “gynecology”]

Redefinition rules:

Savita and Praveen Halappanavar walked unknowingly into Ireland’s grey zone of hidden realities, unspoken truths and word games. … This insistence hinges on a linguistic manoeuvre: there can be no such thing as an abortion to save a mother – simply because we choose to define such a procedure as not being an abortion.
— Fintan O’Toole, “When is an abortion not an abortion?”, Irish Times, 17 November 2012

Of course, such subtleties were lost on the godlings, who refused a necessary medical treatment to save the life of the mother, because such a treatment would result in foetal termination.

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